


Cry of the Whistle

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternate Universe - World War I, Assassins & Hitmen, M/M, Sibling Incest, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-01 18:55:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6532210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Russian codebreaker with a violin. An Italian opera singer with a sniper rifle. They both arrive in Paris on the eve of war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: January 1894

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SpringFRE prompt 86: Spies/Secret Agents AU.
> 
> Many many thanks to linane-art who gave this story a shape and a form.

The train whistle slices through the air, deafening and final. Two little boys sway in the blast of air that followed in the engine’s wake. The hum of conversation rises around them. 

A charade plays out. The boys cling one to another and a tired matron, separates them gently, but firmly. The smaller child she hands up to the conductor while the larger fights her like a wildcat. For a moment, he seems almost to win, tearing from her and running towards the train. She reaches out and snags the back of his coat. Her mouth moves, words lost in the crowd. 

Both boys weep. 

The train leaves the station. The boy in the matron’s care turns to stone. His tears dry up and his face sets in blankness. The matron tries to speak to him again, but he shows no sign of listening. 

When his train arrives, he boards without a fight. He climbs the too tall steps without assistance. He takes his seat. 

The station platform is empty for a time, no further witnesses to the small drama played out there.


	2. April 1914

“Come, come, you must sing for us!” Lady Bombadil clapped her hands around Kili’s arm. “Everyone is simply clamoring for you.” 

The party was in full roar with the rustle of silk gowns rising over the merry laughter of the Paris elite. Many of them had already introduced themselves to the charming foreigner in their midst and Kili’s hand had been pressed many times. The scent of a dozen perfumes had already mingled in his nose. 

Technically, he was there as an esteemed guest, but everyone knew he was there to add some cache to an otherwise lackluster affair. He cultivated the picture he made in his immaculate white suit with it’s red silk handkerchief, at counterpoint with the formal dark colors of the other attending men. 

“Here he is,” Lady Bombadil deposited him in front of the string quartet in the ballroom. “Something short, we’re to sit for dinner soon.” 

“As you like,” Kili said. He hated French. It should’ve been easy to learn over his native tongue, but he found the accent did not fit in his mouth and there were always sly amusement over his ‘charming Italian tongue’. 

“It’s an honor,” the cellist gave him a tight smile. They were all of them hired help to one degree or another. 

“The pleasure is mine,” Kili bowed and they discussed a few selections before resting on _Porquoi me Revellier_. 

When he began, the room was still ferociously loud, but Kili wasn’t concerned. He let his voice quiet the crowd, drawing them into his performance. He was a little young for the role of Werther, but for the length of an aria he could manage to sound a little graver and sadder. When he finished with a last lament for the breath of spring, the room was in crystalline silence 

Applause shattered and he took it as his due with only the slightest inclination of his head. A new swarm of curious glad handers pushed in around him. He turned his eye to the clock and made a game of satisfying them all within the shortest amount of time possible. 

“Will you sing again for us after dinner?” One fevere eyed young woman asked. 

“That is wholly up to my hostess,” he smiled at her. “But for now, I must retire and freshen my throat.” 

“Oh! Of course!” 

He was stopped a few times on the way, but he had accounted for that in his progression. Once he was free of the main press, it was easy to slip into his assigned guest room. He had gently complained about the breeze in the first room he had been given, pleased that it yielded him a courtyard facing room. 

In a flash, he stripped down to his underclothes and left his suit flat on the bed. The window slid easily up under his fingers and under the watchful eye of the half-moon, he grasped onto a gutter and pulled himself out and upward. The gutter clacked, but he didn’t give it time to protest his weight. Within seconds, he was on the rooftop. The case he had left there earlier waited for him. 

“Hello, lovely,” he opened up the viola case and pulled out the gleaming Steyr-Mannlicher that had been his companion since his Paris arrival. 

It wasn’t hard to ready the shot, then lay flat across the roof waiting. His target always waited for dinner to arrive to parties, preferring to avoid the crowd of arriving guests. Predictability was Kili’s greatest ally and he was thrilled when the car pulled up. He waited for the fuss of the valet and the others in the car. 

When a portly man emerged, Kili inhaled, closed one eye and took aim. 

He exhaled. A bloom of darkness spread over the portly man’s fine white shirt. Kili tucked the rifle back into it’s case and took the seconds of precious confusion to climb back into his room. The viola case was posed out in the open beside his suitcase and the gunpowder smell disguised under a fresh application of his cologne. Redressed, he smoothed down the crisp lines of his suit and returned to the party. 

“Something seems to have gone wrong outside,” someone was saying, but for the most part the party-goers hadn’t yet heard the news. 

It was a shame in some ways. Kili had seen the menu for the evening and it had looked spectacular. 

“Murder!” A woman shrieked and everyone stampeded outside. Kili joined them, blending in among the horror struck men and women. The gedermerie didn’t arrive for twenty minutes, long enough for Kili to express his distress along with everyone else and comfort a bevvy of young women. 

No one gave even the hint of a suspicious look to the young Italian singer, surrounded by his ardent fans. 

“I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt him,” sniffed one of the girls. “He was such a nice old man.” 

“Who knows?” Kili smiled at her tenderly. “The world is a cruel and unfair place, mademoiselle.” 

“I don’t know how someone could be so cold-hearted,” she looked up at him, blinking away fake tears. 

“Neither do I,” he took her hand and squeezed it gently. It wasn’t even a lie. 

The inquiry went far into the night and while Kili’s room was searched, no one bothered to open his viola case. He slept peacefully in his borrowed bed and in the morning, shared a cab back to the city with the falsely weeping girl’s family. They tried to get him to stay on with them for lunch, but he parted gracefully to return to the apartment that the opera company had put him up in. 

The stately building only a short walk from the Palais Garnier, a sign of the value they placed on their visiting voices. Rue de Provence was broad and the cobblestone impeccably kept. Kili danced lightly over it as he sorted out his keys. 

By request, they had secured him an apartment on the top floor of the building. There were only two other such rooms and they were both standing empty. Kili didn’t mind the long climb upwards. The building was quiet this early in the day, it’s residents long gone or indulging in morning rituals as foreign to him as their language. 

He unlocked the standard door key and then fiddled with the secondary bolt that he had added. He hoped to long gone before the landlord noticed the addition. Inside, the tastefully furnished rooms opened before him. He slid the viola case under his bed and peeled away his suit, setting it aside. 

Naked, he padded into the washroom. Hot water filled the tub and he watched it steam with a sigh of pleasure. It was a new luxury to him and he had taken advantage as often as possible. 

The hot water sank under his skin and he hummed as he washed himself clean of the day’s travel. There were rehearsals this afternoon, but that was ages away. More than enough time to bathe and while away a few hours drinking strong coffee on his balcony, barely covered in a silky robe. The world was cruel, but today the sun was warm on his bare legs and the jut of the balcony held him from view. 

That night, long after he had proved his worth on the stage once more and endured the sharp notes of the resident soprano, he returned to his little balcony and climbed barefoot to attach an antenna to the roof. Then he transmitted across the rooftops of the sleeping city to the waiting ear of his handler.


	3. April 1914

The club, mostly a bar with a small dance floor, was filled with slick characters in greasy suits and there starving mistresses in crumpled dresses. Fili hated it immediately, but pushed his way through the crowd to the bar. Across the street sat an innocuous set of office buildings with the creep of an antenna spiking upwards from it’s roof. This was where he needed to be, for better or worse. 

The bartender eyeballed him, picking up the rattiness of his suit no doubt or perhaps that he carried with him a rucksack and instrument case. 

“A whiskey, please, on the rocks,” he pushed a five franc note along with the request. He had been working on his accent through the journey. He wondered if he passed through fine French ears as native yet. No matter. He would soon and certainly no one would pin his country of origin. 

The bartender set the drink in front of him with a gentle click at odds with the riotous noise. 

“I saw a sign about a room for rent,” Fili ventured. 

“Then you also saw that it’s for a respectable young woman,” the bartender folded his arms over his chest. “I’ve got daughters and no interest in trouble.” 

“I’m not trouble,” Fili lied. “I can help out around the place, in addition to the rent. I’m good with numbers or just lifting heavy things.” 

“Not interested.” 

“I can swear that I’ve no interest in your daughters, if that’d be a help.” 

It’s a dangerous admission, but less so here than at home. Certainly even less in a club like this on the ragged edge of a crumbling neighborhood. He waits for judgement. 

“See that man,” the bartender pointed to a brute by the door, tall and wide. “He’s going to try to start a fight in a few minutes. He does it every night. If you can get him out of here before he breaks anything then I’ll consider it.” 

“Fine,” Fili took up the whiskey and drained it. He handed the bartender his instrument case. “Hold that, please.” 

He crossed the room the brute. Fili came up to mid-chest on him. The man ignored his presence until Fili accidently tripped into his side. 

“Sorry!” He held out placating hands. 

“I’ll show you sorry!” 

The punch caught Fili across the jaw and the taste of copper filled his mouth. He grinned wide and feral, teeth painted in blood. Then he was a whirlwind: a punch to the solar plexus and a foot stamped down hard on the inside of a calf. The brute staggered and roared, aiming another hit at Fili’s head. He ducked it neatly and leveled another sweeping kick that knocked the man to the ground. In an instant, Fili was on him, a flurry of hits until he was sure the other man was teetering on unconcious. 

Then he got up, brushed off the knees of his pants and check the line of his jacket to make sure he hadn’t flashed the gun strapped to his thigh to anyone, but the enormous man blinking blearily up at him. 

“You should go,” Fili told him and pointedly turned his back. No one laid a finger on him. The bartender handed back his instrument case. “Thank you.” 

“It’s ten francs for the room and you’ll keep check on security on Friday and Saturday nights. You come near my girls and I’ll shoot you. Got it?” 

“Understood.” 

The room was a miserable closet of a space, small bed pushed to one side, wash basin crammed in next to a rickety desk and chair. There was a pipe running across the ceiling, so he hung his other suit and spare shirts there. The rest of the rucksack disgorged the parts of his radio. It had been prudent to break it down from the journey and now he had to rebuild it. The shutters over his window buckled down tight, closing the air in the room. Though the club had had a string of lightbulbs, naked in the haze of smoke, his room had a kerosene lamp that flickered it’s butter yellow over his calloused hands as he worked. 

By the end, he had sweat through his undershirt. The end of a Paris summer thick in the room and the flame licking over it. The radio crackled to life, silence under the pop and fizz of empty channels. 

He fell asleep listening to the ballad of white noise and the desperate hum of tightly wound people trying to find bliss in the club below. Fili could sleep anywhere. Even his dreams remained the same: the steady clack of wheels on a track and the shrill scream of a whistle. He woke with the grey light of dawn and washed the taste of his dream from his mouth with the water in the basin. It’s old and stale, but he’s not up to figuring out where to get more. 

Instead he flicked open the shutters. The street below was already stirring to life, people pushing heavy carts of their wares down to the market, late night revelers staggering home. Across the street, the offices of a law firm sat quiet and blank. There was a cafe beside the bar, tables left outside the elements, wrought iron too heavy for a casual steal. 

The plan of his days assembled before him. 

He washed his face, headed down to the cafe and spent one of his precious few remaining francs on a coffee which he drank black and bitter. He watched the customers slide in, memorizing faces. When he could hold his table no longer, he took up his case and moved a few feet away to the corner of the sidewalk. 

People were walking by with purpose now, onto whatever job held them captive. Fili took out his violin, ran his hands over the beloved wood and began to play. No one questioned the busker with his case open at his feet. No one noticed him as they dropped small coins in a steady patter. 

He played by heart and kept his attention on the law firm, it’s comings and goings. For lunch, he stuck to a cut of bread and cheese bought with his coins. Then he adjourned back up to his room and set his ear to the radio, cascading up and down the stations. 

When the dark came, he stayed close and still nothing, so he slide his way back into his barseat and nursed a whiskey while he kept his eye on the crowd. It was only Thursday, but he wanted to prove his keep. The bartender, Bard he called himself, didn’t say a word to him though he raked suspicious eyes over him a few times. Fili rounded his shoulders, kept himself small. No danger here, said the curl of his spine, forget that you saw me. 

And people did. Within days, he was the ghost of the street. Acknowledged, but not absorbed by those that passed by. Mornings he busked, afternoons and evenings he spent on the radio, and his nights in the club watching the patrons. He kept his eyes and ears keenly tuned, talked to no one and thought of nothing. 

Fili was a sentinel, hollowed of all, but purpose. 

“Monsieur,” a man stopped him as he got up from his seat at the cafe. It had been a month and Fili’s heart skipped a beat at being directly addressed. “You play very well.” 

“Thank you,” he said neutrally. 

“You should sit with us tomorrow morning,” the man gestured at a table of other young men. “We are all artists of one kind or another and artists should keep likeminded company.” 

“I would like that,” he allowed and gained the name Henri Champlain to add to his growing list of locals. 

Perhaps the small break in routine was what was required. That night, the radio finally yielded him something. At first, he wasn’t sure he’d even heard it. The reception was poor and distant, but some fiddling with the dials brought the sound to the fore. It might’ve been an attempt at a musical broadcast, except that it was single voice and the notes were discordant. 

The transmission was wordless, just that one male voice and a parade of ringing notes that traveled with no relation one to the other. 

“What the ever loving fuck?” He grumbled, but gamely made musical notations on stretch of paper with a lean pencil. 

The transmission went through twice, then died as quietly as it came. Fili hummed the notes, but there was just no sense to them. No one composed this way, no one sang to themselves this way. They didn’t even sound like a musical exercise. 

They were just notes. 

Notes. Which had names. 

He started transposing frantically. There weren’t technically enough note names to make an alphabet, but if one doubled up a few things it could get the job done. 

The sun rose on him still working on combinations, eyes gone dry. He wrote out the notes over and over, different clusters. The firm was meant to be a German cluster, but nothing resolved into German or French. French came close though, a few near words with too many misspellings and incorrect abbreviations.

He gave up and went down to the cafe. Henri pulled up a chair when he saw him, 

“I had worried you forgot us.” 

“How could I?” Fili sat down with a faint smile. 

“This is Aubin, he sculpts, “Henri pointed around the table, “Gabriel paints, he is actually being paid a commission at the moment and we’re all very jealous. Jules is our poet and I’ve been working on a novel lo these many years. Both of us write for The Globe to make ends meet.” 

“I refrain from making money,” Aubin said grimly. 

“He objects to art being laid low by capitalism,” Gabriel, who had a very ready grin, winked at Fili.

“Which really means that he can’t sell anything, but no one wants him for anything else,” Jules drawled. 

“What about you?” Henri asked. 

“I have no philosophical objections to money,” Fili said quietly. “Only that I lack the means to do so.” 

They all nodded along companionably and he was apparently, properly adopted after that. The collective parted ways after they finished their coffee, but Gabriel lingered behind and walked Fili to his corner, rolling them both a cigarette. 

“One must enjoy while one has the coin,” Gabriel would say with winking solemnity. 

“You’ll get another commission after this one, surely?”

“Maybe, maybe,” with a quick dance over the matchbook, Gabriel held out the flame to Fili. They smoked companionably for a silent moment. “I asked Henri to invite you over, you know.” 

“Did you?” Fili frowned. “Why?” 

“I saw you alone. You were content to be alone, I think, but maybe aloneness is not content to be with you.” 

“I have no idea what you mean,” Fili raised an eyebrow. 

“I’m not the poet,” Gabriel shrugged. “But I hope you sit with us again tomorrow. Au revoir, mon nouvel ami.” 

“Au revoir,” Fili finished the cigarette and flicked the butt into the gutter. 

As he took out his violin, his mind wandered back to the notes on the wireless. Not the coded meaning, but the notes themselves. How clear they had sounded, how exact. How for a simple coded message, it had been beautiful. 

Fili did not play his usual standards that morning. Instead, his fingers tripped into very old songs. The mournful music of his mother’s homeland and the country that had raised him to be a weapon. Then he counterpointed into his father’s music though he knew far less of it. The dramatic flare of Puccini cried from his strings and then he had it. 

He never hurried in putting his violin away, always treating it with the greatest respect. But that morning he did move at a faster clip than usual. He hurried back to his rooms and bent his attention to his notes. 

Italian. He speared the paper through with the tip of his pencil in his eagerness. The message disgorged itself, abbreviations easier to piecemeal together after that. 

_Bow. Job Completed. Meet the day after premiere at the green salon. Theresa is a nightmare, you owe me. Yours, Arrow._

It wasn’t the message of a group of operatives. This was a single professional. Using Italian of all things. 

“What job?” Fili traced a finger under the words. “What did you do?”

And far more importantly, 

“Who the fuck are you?”


	4. June 1914

“Girls!” Monique yelled when Kili walked in. “Our man is back from the wars of the stage!” 

“Hello,” Kili laughed and opened his arms to the whole of the parlor. “Have I been so missed?” 

“Two weeks without a word,” Deirdre pouted at him from a couch where a john lays over her lap insensible with drink. “We started to think you didn’t like us anymore.” 

“Impossible!” He pulled his wallet out and spread a few bills out. “I apologize with drinks all around, acceptable?” 

A ragged cheer went up and the champagne started to flow. He found a seat by the fire, Deirdre and Monique sitting on the arms and fussing over him, asking about his performances and the like. When he grew tired of answering, they happily ignored him, catching each other up on house gossip. He relaxed into their talk, letting it wash over him. 

Later, he would pay them handsomely for their time. Enough that they could take the night off in the room upstairs that he would hire. They were good about letting him sleep if they got their bellies filled and their bodies left alone. He’d become something of a favorite, once they got over suspicion of his motives. 

“Excuse us,” a gentleman appeared in Kili’s peripheral vision. “If I might have a moment alone, ladies? Business.” 

The man was startlingly slim and his face youthful. His suit was impeccable and expensive, still unwrinkled despite the late hour. Sitting gracefully down across from Kili, he waited until the girl’s had gone. 

“Hello, Arrow,” he said gravely. “I must admit, I find your choice of meeting spaces...unusual.” 

“Bow?” Kili raised his eyebrows. This was not what he had expected of his handler. The last one had been a high ranking officer, gritty and dusty with age. “I find the location suits my needs.” 

“It does provide a certain cover,” he smoothed his hand over his pant leg. “You did well. You’re...unusually good at your job.” 

“Thank you,” Kili picked up the drink he had ordered and left untouched. He had not intention of drinking in front of this man, but it gave him something to do with his hands. “Why the face to face?”

“There was activity on our channel a few nights ago. It seems to have been entirely incidental, but I thought it better to avoid the risk for a week or so to ensure it doesn’t repeat,” he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Standard book cipher. Page 46 of your libretto.” 

“You have an interest in opera?” Kili took the envelope in his free hand. He ensured that Bow was watching, then made a quick gesture. The envelope disappeared. Bow gave no change of expression except for the tiniest uptick of the left side of his lip. 

“I have an interest in you,” he stood smoothly. “And your head. Please do try to keep it on your shoulders.” 

“I make every effort,” Kili assured him. “A pleasure meeting you.” 

“Yes,” he said with a faint tinge of surprise. “It was, wasn’t it?” 

And then he was gone back through the clouds of smoke and perfume, returning to what Kili could only guess was some kind of headquarters. No one told an asset like him much and for good reason. Getting caught was an inevitability, he was well aware. Some day, some time, he would slow down or miss something vital and he would give his life for his country. He didn’t mind. Italy and the family he had there had sustained him, succored him through his childhood. He would give it back the life it had given him, those borrowed golden years. 

He stayed the night to keep up his cover, dozing on fresh laundered sheets while the two girls he had paid, stayed up gossiping about people he’d never met. Their talk colored his dreams, dyeing the fields of his youth with the grit of Paris. He woke, dislocated and head aching. He choose to walk to the opera house, clearing his head as he went. 

The letter burned in his pocket as he ran through queues and nodded at the appropriate junctures while the clueless director gave him a befuddlement of notes that added up to nothing. Kili knew how to give the right kind of assurances, while maintaining his ‘confused foreigner’ mask. It gave him some wiggle room to do what he pleased. 

“Bien!” The director clapped his hands together. “Remember, we have esteemed audience members tomorrow night! Everyone must shine!” 

A chorus of bored agreement rained down and then Kili was free to head back to his room and unfold his prize. The handwriting was startlingly neat and without hesitation marks, unusual for ciphering. Kili’s estimation of Bow went up several notches. And up again when he realized that Bow had specified which section of the page would unlock the cipher. And then again, when he saw that it would only work if the Italian was translated into French. Which was annoying, but smart. 

_New target. Corporal Jean-Paul Latour. 27 Rue de Laborde. Evaluate only._

Kili burned the paper with his lighter, watching the ash crumble across his balcony and be swept off in the wind. Evaluation was the hard part. He’d have to spend the next few weeks following the man from place to place. Dull, but necessary. The kill order would come eventually though. It always did. No one sent him on reconnaissance missions. 

“My apologies, Latour,” he said to the passing breeze. “But all is as it is.” 

A creeping sensation ran over his skin and he looked to the street. It was busy in the late afternoon, the crowd shifting about normally. He couldn’t pick out a single person with their eyes cast upwards. Even if he could, none of them would be able to see him in his perch. 

“Paranoid,” he scolded himself, but went back in, closing the shutters firmly behind him. Better alive and paranoid than relaxed and dead.

He got out his map. Laborde was only a fifteen minute walk. Might as well begin immediately. He changed into a more casual suit, dark to hide the street’s dirt on the hems. Stepping into the crowd relieved some of his tension. He could hide among them easily, just another young man on his way from one place to another. 

The address proved to be an austere building with windows closed to the world. There was a restaurant across the street with a good view. Kili went in and ordered a light lunch. He had no illusions about pinning down the target so easily, likely the man wouldn’t return home until evening at the earliest. 

As he watched, a curl of noise took his attention briefly. The soft sad trembling notes of a violin. He looked over the street, but the busker must’ve been just out of view. Almost as soon as he became aware of the music, it ceased. 

A chill went down his spine, for no reason he could name. He paid his tab and left in a hurry, but the musician was long gone by then, if such a person had ever been. Perhaps, he had begun hearing things. 

“Pardon me, monsieur,” he turned to a man lingering on the corner apparently waiting for a cab. “But did you see a violinist here?” 

“Non,” the man frowned at him. “I thought I had heard one though. Perhaps the next street up?” 

Kili thanked him and walked on. There was no violinist on the next corner either. Foolishness. All of it. Kili gave himself a good shake. The melody stuck to him though, the trill of notes playing over and over. 

“I know you,” he murmured, humming the tune. The cascade of notes that hooked into him and dragged at a memory so long buried that it turned to ashes as he tried to drag it out. It would not come. It plagued him on his way home and into his dreams. When he woke the next morning, it was the first song to trip from his lips as he washed his face. 

He stared at his reflection in the ornate mirror as the notes formed in his throat and tripped out into the air. A question, as old as he could recall, reached out through time:

“Who the hell are you?"


End file.
